Left, by Jordan Mansfield; Right, by Andreas Rentz, both from Getty Images.

Last Saturday, one week after the U.S. Open, John McEnroe was sitting on a sofa in his corner suite in The Greenbrier—dressed head to toe in Nike, waiting to play Pete Sampras in an annual exhibition match in the resort’s new stadium nestled in the Allegheny mountains of West Virginia. There, I asked McEnroe if he had any advice for Shia LaBeouf, the actor playing him in Borg vs. McEnroe. The movie is based on the 1980 Wimbledon championship match between McEnroe and Bjorn Borg, widely touted as the most epic face-off in tennis history. (Spoiler alert, sort of: McEnroe lost to Borg.)

McEnroe’s response? “Be accurate,” he said. On some counts, LaBeouf has already failed at this: he’s been photographed recently hitting right-handed on the movie set. McEnroe is a lefty.

LaBeouf does conjure the scrappy McEnroe gestalt—the wild frizzy hair, red headband, Wilson wooden racquet, and the 1980s tennis togs are all in full effect. The actor told Variety in May that he chased the script after passing on another McEnroe-inspired screenplay called Superbrat. LaBeouf called this film “truthful, tangible, anchored, human”; the script, he said, is brilliant (“I cried the first time I read it.”).

To prepare, LaBeouf trained for two months and read McEnroe’s autobiography. He had hoped to meet the tennis star before production started, but nothing ever materialized. Neither the director nor the actor have reached out to McEnroe for input or sent him the script, according to McEnroe. (VF.com has reached out to LaBeouf and director Janus Metz Pedersen for comment.)

“I don’t know if they are planning on doing the whole movie without input or any type of arrangement from me or Bjorn,” he said. “I haven’t seen anything, and they’ve already started the movie.”

Make a movie about McEnroe without consulting him first? You cannot be serious. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.) And McEnroe seems offended: “It doesn’t seem like they are all that interested in talking with me,” he said. “I don’t know how you can do it without ever meeting me. Maybe you could talk to a few of my friends. I can barely remember what I was like 36 years ago when I was 21 years old. It could be entertaining. If it’s good, it’d be cool. Let’s hope.”

At times, both he and LaBeouf have been known for their outbursts and outlandish behavior; LaBeouf himself has drawn comparisons between him and McEnroe, saying they have everything in common. Both men are “passionate. Perfectionist. Narcissistic. I’m a bit of a caricature also,” he told Variety.

McEnroe raised his eyebrows at the comparisons. “Supposedly he’s crazy,” he said. “So maybe that works. I’ve never talked to him, so I don’t know how he could play me.”

McEnroe is most concerned with the film’s authenticity, and the actors not looking foolish on the court.

“It’s difficult even for tennis players to re-enact what they did,” he said. “So how in the hell is an actor going to do it on a court? It looks fake. They look like actors who can’t play. You see these guys, they go out there and they barely even know how to play tennis. Hopefully they’re focusing on stuff off the court. Unless they intertwine it [with] real footage. Then it would be cool, maybe.”

I ask if he’s seen the pictures that surfaced this past week of Shia LaBeouf dressed as him on set in Prague. McEnroe shakes his head. He hasn’t seen them, but he’s amused at the thought, his eyes lighting up. McEnroe laughs when told that LaBeouf has a body double. In photos, the actor is seen smoking courtside dressed as young McEnroe.

“Uh-oh,” McEnroe says. “It’s the actual hitting of the ball I worry about. I don’t know who his body double is, but let’s hope he’s lefty, for starters.”

The 1980 Wimbledon match saw two rivals that could not have been more different pitted against one another. Borg was cool, stoic, and silent; McEnroe was hot-headed, loud, and brash. Borg was a righty and played defense. McEnroe was a lefty and attacked. The crowd loved Borg, the hero. McEnroe was a villain. One was ice and the other fire. It defined sports rivalries, and was cinematic tennis at its best—but McEnroe himself did not consider the match worthy of a movie.

“At the time, I could never have imagined it becoming a movie,” McEnroe said. “It was never a match that felt like it was something amazing. At the time, you’re just caught up in just trying to compete and win. I could see where that could be interesting, but I didn’t think it at the time.”

“If it turns out I’m not involved, it wouldn’t be the worst thing if it turned out to be a great movie,” McEnroe said. “But I’ve never seen a good tennis movie—they all were terrible. I’ve been in a couple of them, and it was embarrassing to me how bad they were. But sometimes you have to hope for the best.”